My name is Barry Sotero, and I am a devoted adherent to the dual and complementing philosophies of Austrian Economics and civil libertarianism. As the name of this site suggests, pretty much EVERYTHING reported in the corporate mass media is heavily spun, manipulated, and outright lies. If something gets a ton of attention or is promoted by the "css", one can be sure it is an untruth. You know, things like manmade global warming, the war on terror, and the false Left/Right paradigm that gives us a 'choice' between Republicrats and Demopublicans. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" have become utterly meaningless and are merely (for the most part) synonyms for "Democrat-voting-hacks" and "Republican-voting-hacks". We already live in a very Orwellian country where people think slavery is freedom, war is peace, and where the State controls--beginning in the mandatory indoctrination centers it calls "schools" (where they fill young children's vulnerable minds with all kinds of propaganda about history, governance, and economics; where they fill young children's vulnerable bodies full of pharmacuetical drugs and horrible food)--the populaces' thinking to a large degree; political correctness, celebrity spokespersons, politicians, advertising, and the mass media all reinforce the indoctrination which has turned the American populace into dumbed-down, complacent, consumer-driven serfs who actually think they're free.

I had posted a welcome to you a couple of threads below this one, Barry, but welcome again.

You wrote in your introduction that American schools are indoctrination centers

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where they fill young children's vulnerable bodies full of pharmacuetical drugs and horrible food

I have to agree with you that many schools' breakfast/lunch programs aren't up to the usual gourmet restaurant standards. But they're better quality than many kids get at home. They're regular and there is a growing push to eliminate as much fat and calories from those school meals as possible.

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It found, however, that nearly a third of schools were now offering and serving lunches that met its more restrictive saturated fat standard and 20% had reduced total fat to below it’s total fat standard. Since 1998, it reported that the percentage of elementary schools that were complying with its standards had doubled from 15% to 34%, and secondary schools from 13% to 24%. But, given that the medical literature shows children need fat, are such severe restrictions a good thing?

The effects of this RWJF-led school meals policy initiative are already being seen. Children’s weights haven’t changed, leading school officials, like the Time Magazine writer, to believe that kids must still be eating too much fat, sugar and calories and that their diets need to be restricted even more rigorously. Large school districts are even taking the restrictions on overall diets to individual foods, and “healthy” eating efforts to slim kids down are coming to mean they must have as little fat, salt, sugars or calories as possible. Increasingly, actual nutrition audits of school lunches are finding children are being underfed and shorted on vital calories and nutrients needed for growth.

Even more concerning are the growing numbers of young people and parents who have come to see “healthy” eating as meaning low-fat, low-sugar, low-salt, low-calorie, and increasingly restrictive, eliminating foods they’ve come to fear are bad for them. Disordered eating and dysfunctional relationships with food have become so common, sadly, few young people even understand what normal eating is anymore. To start, it is not what was exemplified in the “School Cuisine.”